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Composite Lp Gas Cylinders Help Strengthen Customer Loyalty

By Morten Balle, regional sales director, Ragasco AS

Composite lpg cylinders have many advantages over steel cylinders and consumers have a growing appreciation of their unique qualities.

Ragasco AS is a world leader in the manufacture of composite lpg cylinders and has been marketing them since 2000. In that time, more than six million of the company’s lp gas cylinders have found their way into the lpg industry.

Ragasco has made composite cylinders a standard part of the lp gas cylinder industry. Most of its cylinders are used in European markets, but significant quantities are in use in the Americas and Middle East and, to a smaller degree, in Africa and Asia.

In more mature markets, composite lpg cylinders are typically used by lpg distributors as a way to strengthen ties with consumers. They normally recover part of the additional investment a composite lpg cylinder represents by setting up a scheme to motivate the consumer to buy more lpg gas and thus recover the investment through lp gas sales.

Composite lp gas cylinders induce significant customer loyalty. Our experience is that, if a consumer has been using composite cylinders, they won’t returning to steel cylinders, even if there are no obstacles to them doing so.

Competitive conditions and purchasing power will typically determine the composite lpg cylinder’s market penetration. In some Scandinavian markets, it’s now in the range of 60-70 per cent of all fillings, whereas other markets are more in the neighbourhood of 10-15 per cent.

In growth markets, end users’ appreciation of the composite lpg cylinder’s unique qualities is the main sales driver. The lighter weight of the composite cylinder comes in very handy in areas with poor infrastructure and no public transport, for instance. Often users have to travel considerable distances to get a refill, and the more than 50 per cent reduction in tare weight either allows the user to collect more lpg for the same effort, or use less effort for the same amount of lpg.

In a number of growth markets, lpg is replacing firewood or kerosene, either as part of a programme to prevent deforestation or to reduce illness and deaths due to contamination and fire accidents. As Ragasco composite lpg cylinders are the safest lpg cylinders ever brought to market, it is obviously very comforting to have them where families typically live, cook, eat and sleep in a confined space and fatalities will be high in the case of an explosion.

In recent years, the industry has seen lpg consumption stagnate or fall in developed countries, and there has been increased focus on the usage of lpg gas in other areas. The World LP Gas Association, through its Exceptional Energy initiative, is doing a tremendous job encouraging the use of lpg. This effort is being made on many different political and business levels and in all parts of the world.

Often composite lpg cylinders are used to show innovation in a sector that is viewed as old fashioned and outdated. At Ragasco, we are happy to help increase focus on a very important, but also often overlooked, energy source.
In a time when a lot of time and money is spent trying on reducing CO₂ emissions and pollution in general, lpg is becoming more and more attractive as a motor fuel. At Ragasco, we are seeing a growing interest for composite lpg cylinders for forklift trucks.

Health and safety legislation is often in conflict with the need to load and unload steel lp gas cylinders onto forklift trucks for refuelling, but the reduced weight of a composite lpg cylinder is normally within acceptable ranges for manual lifting. Ragasco cylinders for forklift trucks have a range of valve solutions, from the simplest vapour valve equipped with a dip tube for liquid withdrawal to the US type multi function valve with service connection, safety relief valve and max-filling spit valve.

All in all, the usage of composite lpg cylinders is growing every day and, as a result, more and more lpg users are getting an even more positive experience from using this great energy.

Contact Ragasco on +34 699 924048 www.ragasco.com